Magnolia International has released Magnolia 3.0, the next generation of its open-source Enterprise Content Management System (ECM).
Magnolia 3.0 is a commercial open-source Enterprise Content Management System that integrates web content management (CMS) and document management (DMS) through one web-based, AJAX-powered user interface. It is used around the world to maintain web sites, intranets and extranets by companies, governments and NGO's of any size.
Magnolia's main new features include workflow, versioning, JSR-168 support, single-sign-on, scheduled content publishing, a browser-based template-designer, a deployment packager and a new, even better user interface.
Magnolia makes Enterprise Content Management simple by being user-friendly, battle-tested, enterprise-ready and open-source. Magnolia is available in more than 15 languages including Russian, Chinese, English, French, German and Spanish.
Three Magnolia editions are available:

MAGNOLIA COMMUNITY EDITION is a free, easy-to-use yet powerful enterprise content management system based on JSR-170.

MAGNOLIA ENTERPRISE EDITION offers additional features, availability of professional support and an upgrade path to new versions for mission critical enterprise content management.

MAGNOLIA BUSINESS PROCESS EDITION lets you draw and document business processes directly in the browser without the need of additional client software.

Last time I looked at this, I compared it to Drupal and went with Drupal. Drupal was so much easier to install, had more themes-I mean had themes, more modules, huge userbase, etc. Is there a reason to try it again?

Last time I looked at this, I compared it to Drupal and went with Drupal. Drupal was so much easier to install, had more themes-I mean had themes, more modules, huge userbase, etc. Is there a reason to try it again?

Ferrari is a great car, but you fit more people into a Toyota bus. Read: its the requirements, stupid!
There are always systems you may like better - its a big world after all. If you live in an Enterprise environment, you may just want that integration and standards-adherance you get with a Java-based system. And in that space, Magnolia, as a Simple Enterprise CMS, is quite singular from a feature and support perspective. Open-Source, used around the world, easy-to use and commercially supported. Just what the doctor ordered - as our growing list of Enterprise customers clearly shows.
If your business requirements don't match our target audience, you will be better of with something else. If they do, there is no alternative.

There are a lot of PHP CMS systems, and they make up the top open source CMSs in use by a long shot. I think the reasons are the energy of the PHP developers and the availability and flexibility of the PHP/MySQL environment. Contrast this with the overbuilt nature of Java and the problems with boostrapping and administering Java systems.
I wish it weren't so though. I really like the more careful engineering one usually finds in the Java world, the rich APIs, the excellent tool support, the rigourous specifications, and so on. I think as PHP becomes more sophisticated and Java adjusts to what people really want, eventually they'll meet in the middle.
In the case of Drupal, I've followed it for a few years and developed a few sites with it, but wouldn't mind a good reason to switch away, particularly to a Java based system.
Among other things, the core Drupal developers refuse to support anything like an API from version to version, so all those great modules you thought were available or wrote for one version become maintenance problems the next version. In fact many of the clever techniques end up changing from version to version. Combine this with the lack of anything like unit tests, PHP's loose typing, the fact that the project leadership and interests changes with the tides, and its a recipe for disaster for many purposes. You have to admire the energy though.

For my personal use I am using a php based CMS (joomla) but I would never use such a php site for a professional web site, especially for a big company.
The APIs aspect is a real concern. How would you integrate your php CMS with your legacy applications? At least with java you haev got APIs and you have a the JSR standard.
You don't have this in php.

After browsing through the Magnolia website I realized that that Important features like Versioning and Workflow were missing from the Community Edition. That dampened my excitement over the 3.0 release. I guess I would wait for Alfresco to evolve as a full-fledged Web Content Management System as it has the same set of features in both Community and Enterprise Editions.

Well maybe you should not browse but test. Workflow and versioning are essential parts of Magnolia and of course are part of the community edition. The OpenWFE BPM we use is the only cross-platform workflow engine out there that allows us to use Magnoliaa as part of an enterprise-wide architecture in a heterogenous environment - examples: start a workflow with magnolia, use perl for some content manipulation, connect to .net for some data, run an agent in python and finally publish on an array of magnolia servers.
Let me know which other system even comes close to the enterprise readiness of Magnolia. And yes, all of the above works fine in the free, open-source community edition.

I hope the "Live Demo" on Magnolia's site is not representative of the responsiveness and stability of this application after installed.
Most of the screens took forever to draw. The in-page editing tools didn't work ("Move" button seemed to attempt to do a drag-and-drop but no visual feedback was created and the cursor seemed to drag an invisible artifact). The web editor didn't show up at all (tried both firefox and IE6). Templates are still loading, it's been over 10 mins (just came back with 'mgnlTreeControl is null or not an object' javascript error)...
Hmm, for some reason, live demos are too often crippled in CMS projects (I don't believe long feature lists), and it's a pity, because it's a perfect way to showcase a product which is designed to manage a website...

I hope the "Live Demo" on Magnolia's site is not representative of the responsiveness and stability of this application after installed.

We have a 1MBit internet connection that suffices for the usual traffic we get but not for being swamped after a 3.0 release - I guess its quite obvious that the demo will be slow.
Magnolia has excellent resource management - we recently tested 400 concurrent users at 64MB RAM in total. We have seen installations with up to 8million hits per hour on a single machine. So don't worry, its quite nice and fast.

Alfresco is a significant Java development effort worth watching. It's already quite capable in its current form. I don't see why one cannot adapt its web service interface for direct web content publishing.

Alfesco is a significant Java development effort worth watching. It's already quite capable in its current form. I don't see why one cannot adapt its web service interface for direct web content publishing.

Well, Magnolia is already there, and with a proven history of success. We have powered 8 million hits on single standard servers at the amgentourofcalifornia. Magnolia powers the Spanish government's main website. Our list of references is quite amazing if I may say so myself. Our approach of "Simple Enterprise Content Management" is unique and exactly what users in the over-complicated technology-heavy world of today need.
A. doesn't have a CMS. Its thin layer of JSR-170 support is make-believe. Magnolia allows you to swap repository implementations. A. does not and thus locks you into their system for good. A's sole reference customer for the last year has been bc.com, which in fact uses Magnolia for its intranet and will use Magnolia for its pubic web site by the end of the year.
Maybe you are looking in the wrong direction?

Alfesco is a significant Java development effort worth watching. It's already quite capable in its current form. I don't see why one cannot adapt its web service interface for direct web content publishing.

Well, Magnolia is already there, and with a proven history of success. We have powered 8 million hits on single standard servers at the amgentourofcalifornia. Magnolia powers the Spanish government's main website. Our list of references is quite amazing if I may say so myself. Our approach of "Simple Enterprise Content Management" is unique and exactly what users in the over-complicated technology-heavy world of today need.

A. doesn't have a CMS. Its thin layer of JSR-170 support is make-believe. Magnolia allows you to swap repository implementations. A. does not and thus locks you into their system for good. A's sole reference customer for the last year has been bc.com, which in fact uses Magnolia for its intranet and will use Magnolia for its pubic web site by the end of the year.

Maybe you are looking in the wrong direction?

Alfresco IS a fully featured CMS - but it does not yet have complex WCM capabilities. Alfresco has multiple reference customers already and has only been around for a year - you should check the website. Have you actually done any research on it? The JSR-170 layer is a complete level 2 implementation - there is no need to "swap" repository implementations with Alfresco, and if you use the JSR-170 API you can always use a different 170 impl later if you need too.
I downloaded Magnolia community version today, installed and played for 15 minutes:
AJAX isn't used to improve user experience. Basically, you get a "navigation" bar on the left, and the right updates when you select something on the left without re-loading the complete page. Wow.
The DM capabilities are new folder, delete folder, new doc, delete doc, publish. That's it.
The WCM capabilities are nowhere near as sophisticated as the Alfresco targets. The best feature is the ability to sort-of edit WYSIWYG page templates.
JackRabbit is used underneath. However, it leaks into the UI. To perform many administration tasks you have to modify the underlying node, property structure directly.
The meatier stuff must be in the enterprise edition and that's not open source.

Alfresco IS a fully featured CMS - but it does not yet have complex WCM capabilities.

Shooting "nearly a goal" is no goal. I am sure you will get there, but claiming "WCM" on your homepage without delivering on it for a year now is reminding me of vapor ware announcements in the proprietary world, not of a proper open-source company.

The JSR-170 layer is a complete level 2 implementation - there is no need to "swap" repository implementations with Alfresco,

The JSR-170 layer is a complete level 2 implementation - there is no need to "swap" repository implementations with Alfresco, and if you use the JSR-170 API you can always use a different 170 impl later if you need too.

Meanwhile, we know where the content has vanished. It is located in a so called AVM space, where AVM seems to translate to Alfresco Versioning Machine, and is used for staged WCM projects. AVM type spaces do not support JCR-170 at all. So no wonder, we were wondering where our content was. Accessing an AVM store requires the use of the proprietary org.alfresco.repo.avm package.
Nice to hear that alfresco disposes of its own full-fledged level 2 JCR repo implementation. But this does not really help if for AVM stores not even a level 1 API is offered. This is not documented (at least we could not found it), just an accidently viewed forum post brought light to that.
And by the way, my post is still awaiting response. Ever since Aug. 25.
A more than amazed Alfresco user.

I could have sworn that they had a Demo and Screenshots on their previous versions of the software. Am I blind, or is this just not in there?
Are they talking "Content Management" (i.e; updating web site pages), or "Document Management" (updating corporate docs - word docs, spreadsheets, etc..). These are two different applications.

CMS usually means the ability to manage and display discreet data. DMS is usually at the document level.
You have to wonder if its desireable to manage a separate CMS, DMS, etc, etc. What the average group is looking for has elements of CMS, DMS, portal, workgroup functionality (workflow, surveys, etc), and so on, with cohesiveness between all these pieces. That's why kitchen sink approaches like Drupal are successful, they do most of what most people want out of the box (although eventually what you want isn't supported and you're stuck with customization). In the long run the JCP approach may be successful, particularly JSR 168 and 170 in this realm.
While OpenCMS has been around for a while and looks great, it seems to be its own thing, without much support for leading components and standards, making development and integration more isolated.

CMS usually means the ability to manage and display discreet data. DMS is usually at the document level.

You have to wonder if its desireable to manage a separate CMS, DMS, etc, etc. What the average group is looking for has elements of CMS, DMS, portal, workgroup functionality (workflow, surveys, etc), and so on, with cohesiveness between all these pieces.

Yes. Yes. Yes.
Every time I've been involved with a *MS, it was always some mix of the above. This cannot be ignored.
I'm liking alfresco simply for the JSR 170 support that is so clean I can build other things on it with ease.
Well that and the fact that there's no crippleware now.
Magnolia is a nice product, though you really have to DL the demo to get the full effect of it.
Congrats to the Magnolia Team

After i have been playing with magnolia 2.51 for a while, i have been waiting for the 3.0 version before starting with new implementations.
What a bad idea ... Magnolia 3.0 is not absolutely ready.
The documentation is not in sync with the 3.0 version: even the very first thing in documentation of the newbie package (the starting URL for the tomcat bundle) is incorrect (8081 port is wrong, should be 8080) !!
I tried with the bundle after having found problems with the wars (and that after i gave up in installation under jboss) ... even the bundle is broken.
The activation does not work, the paths are wrong (it does not make any sense waste time to repair the newbie version).
Moreover the 3.0 version is A LOT slower than the 2.51 version (same machine, same app server, same installation, ...)
After 30 minutes i found so many problems that i gave up ...

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